


conversations with the crows

by interestinggin



Category: Henry IV Part 1 - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works, The Hollow Crown (2012)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 03:09:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6267145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interestinggin/pseuds/interestinggin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is better this way, he thinks, trudging upwards, picking his way across the bodies of men and horses alike. There are crows on the field, spectres at the feast; here to make sport and board out of the deaths of men. Hal sees one of them standing on a body, curious in its’ stare, and it turns its’ head slowly to meet his gaze.</p>
<p><i>Take care of him</i>, Kate had whispered - oh, a lifetime ago now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	conversations with the crows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [adiva_calandia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/adiva_calandia/gifts).



> Inspired by the [thirty prompts meme](http://interestinggin.tumblr.com/post/140331578359/conversations-with-the-crows-katehalharry) on Tumblr.

Hal cries when they bring him the body. It is one final indignity for the man that he loved; loved too much and too brightly to burn overlong. The corpse has been dragged through the mud and the shit and the wreckage of the battlefield, and in that moment it is all he can do not to strike Jack, not to throw him to the ground, not to shake him and break down and weep and ask him how he _dares_ to claim victory over the Hotspur of the North. **  
**

He does no such thing. He wipes his face; blames the tears on sweat or exhaustion, and gives his brother a look which means _hold on to me, little one, I’ll get you home_. Jack he beckons closer, bids him carry the body, and only those who know him best would know that he is breaking. John is in too much pain to be worried, and that, Hal thinks with only a twinge of guilt, is something to be grateful for.

_It is better this way_ , he thinks, trudging upwards, picking his way across the bodies of men and horses alike. He thinks of the madness in Harry’s eyes in his final moments, and of the snarl in his voice, and of the sudden, childlike fear when he realised it was over. _He would have asked for this, if he knew it would come to it. If he had known what they would turn him into._

There are crows on the field now, spectres at the feast; here to make sport and board out of the deaths of men. Hal sees one of them standing on a body, curious in its’ stare, and it turns its’ head slowly to meet his gaze.

_Take care of him_ , Kate had whispered - oh, a lifetime ago now.

 

 

Ten years ago, or maybe more, they took a ride out from Alnwick towards the coast; full of laughter and the joys of being young and in love, and Kate climbed up onto Hal’s horse and took the reigns while Harry cursed them both and rode off to catch her steed before it bolted. They sent away servants, drank dark wine from bottles stowed in saddlebags, and made love in a wooded glade from an over-sentimental ballad, and as the dusk crept upon them and their thoughts turned to the long ride home, Kate pulled her headscarf from under Hal’s hips and started to wrap up her hair.

Hal sat up and kissed her neck, soft and slow. She smiled, fingers twisted in her braids.

“Oh, God’s _teeth_ ,” Harry murmured, jumping to his feet and pulling up his hose, “I’ll not stay here all night for you two to fret over your toilet. Wrap it up and have done with it.”

Hal laughed against Kate’s skin, the spiced smell of her hair still mingling with the scent of sex. They watched Harry saddle the horses, talking to them with a tenderness he rarely bothered with for other humans. His hands were gentle as he brushed down his palfrey. The rings on his fingers a glimmer of bright against the sun-browned skin. Sunlight was dying behind the trees, turning the whole world burnished gold, and the woods were endless and eternal, and a crow was watching them all from a branch six feet above. Hal, not yet a prince nor even an heir, with Richard on the throne and his father not yet banished, felt the air turn close; an ache hot and heavy in his chest.

The sound of the bird’s croak brought him back to himself, to his lovers, to the world of man. To the warm weight of a woman leaning back against his chest, and the soft murmuring of her lips.

“What?” he asked, looking up toward heaven, up to the canopy of the trees. To the crow sat high above Harry, looking down, looking for all the world like it knew him.

“I said _take care of him_ , Hal,” Kate said, catching her hand in his and kissing it. “God knows that he will not.”

“My own love,” Hal had replied, with a flash of bright teeth, “I am sure you give him too little credit. He has sense enough to fear your wrath. I doubt even our Harry would dare to come to harm when you have forbidden it.”

“Away with you, prattler,” she had laughed, swatting at his hand, even now creeping for the ties of her dress. “Come. We must rise before he loses patience.”

“What patience?” asked Hal innocently, but he let her pull him to his feet.

The crow did not move, even when they mounted their horses beneath it. It remained staring at Harry, following his movements with black eyes, and if Kate or Harry noticed they said nothing. Hal felt the ache turn to rage, to an inexplicable, unjustified hatred for the bird. He picked a stone from the ground and threw it overarm.

“Your aim’s not yet improved, I see,” Harry snorted, urging his horse forward from the clearing. 

“Your opinion was not needed, Percy,” Hal retorted, without much enthusiasm. He watched the crow rise into the air and settle, feathers ruffled, on another branch, cawing in what he fondly imagined as derision. It stayed, statue-still, as they made for the path. Hal felt it watch them leave, and shivered.

 

 

_Take care of him, Hal_ , Kate had said. And Hal has done so, or so he tells himself, desperate and full of guilt; he saved him in the only way had had left.

On the battlefield the crow opens its’ beak, and makes no sound. Hal wonders if he should bear Harry himself, but what difference can it make now? Harry has been dead for months; since his family first poured poison in his ear, and since Hal first sat down in a wretched hovel in Eastcheap and tried to forget that the world had changed. 

He marches on, determined not to look but staring anyway, his mind full of black feathers and blood. Jack waits behind him with the thing that once was Harry draped across his back, mud-splattered and broken, and John’s arm is heavy like a noose around his neck, and Hal can only stare, stare at the crow on the corpse, and wish it were ten years and forever ago.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based on the rumour that young Prince Hal (or his Dad, depending on your sources) cried over Hotspur’s body when it was brought to him. 
> 
> If you were seventeen and you’d just fought a battle against impossible odds and someone brought you a mangled corpse and then expected you to look pleased, I expect you’d cry too.


End file.
